Slow Burn

by Roxie Noir

  Thanks to the vodka, I smile sweetly and apologetically at her.

  “Sorry, mother,” I say. “I didn’t mean to worry everyone.”

  Her face softens, and my father walks up to her, head held high without speaking. He doesn’t even have to ask her to adjust his tie, she just knows it’s what he wants.

  Five years ago — hell, even two years ago — I’d have watched this and thought this is what I should be working toward. But now, watching my mother just understand what my father’s demanding of her just sends a shiver down my spine.

  Then it’s time. The lights go down over the audience. The lights on the stage go up. Over the loudspeaker, a faceless voice tells everyone to please look for the nearest exit in case of an emergency, and then we’re all herded onto stage, where I’ll be sitting for at least an hour in an uncomfortable metal folding chair.

  As the oldest, I sit next to my mother, though Grace gets to sit closest to the edge of the stage since she’s holding a baby and might have to go at any moment. I, on the other hand, don’t have to do anything. My job is to sit here and look pretty, just another piece of my father’s perfect family.

  The broken piece, sure. The piece that everyone thinks should be grateful to be allowed on stage at all.

  Years and years of keeping sweet have made me pretty good at sitting quietly and smiling gently, but the years haven’t really made it easier. My face still feels like it might crack into a thousand pieces.

  Everyone’s seated. There’s a row of American flags behind us, enough red, white, and blue to outfit an entire parade, as if one flag simply wouldn’t do.

  A speaker walks out. I think it’s the president of the college, but again, it’s not my job to pay attention, so I don’t. He starts talking about what a wonderful man my father is, his lovely family, his hard line on morals, all the good he’s done for South Carolina. There’s polite applause. Someone else gets up there and praises my father more.

  I’m not listening. Not even a little. Over on the side of the stage, barely visible, Gabriel’s standing, hands folded in front of himself, watching attentively.

  It’s distracting. No matter how much I try not to think about him, about how good he looks in a suit, about the calm, self-assured way he carries himself, about the way he smiles at me sometimes when he thinks no one is looking.

  My mind’s not here. It’s back between the curtains, just the two of us alone. Gabriel, on the phone, telling Ray I was praying for strength.

  He didn’t have to. I’m positive my father would love proof that I’m the problem he thinks I am.

  But he did. And he smiled at me and it felt like it was a hundred and fifty degrees backstage, close enough that I could smell his shaving cream from that morning. Nearly close enough to feel his body heat.

  And his eyes. I swear I can feel it when he looks at me, like fingertips tracing over bare skin, my heart pounding like it’s trying to escape my chest. Whenever I’m near him I have the insane desire to touch him, run my hands along the muscles in his arms, sit on his lap and let him kiss my neck…

  A molten knot of desire starts to unfurl inside me, and suddenly I snap back to reality, because I am on stage behind my father, sitting next to my mother, and fantasizing about my bodyguard.

  I look down at the floor of the stage, fold my hands in my lap, and cross my legs. It doesn’t help, but it’s probably better than nothing. I feel a little lost and adrift, out of my element with the sheer intensity of everything.

  I knew I had a silly, girlish crush on Gabriel. Of course I do. He’s handsome, sexy, has that voice, and isn’t related to me, but this feels more intense than some crush.

  My father drones on. I look out at the audience, trying to calm my nerves, but I glance over at Gabriel instead. He’s looking straight at me.

  And suddenly I realize what this is.

  This is lust.

  I almost gasp out loud. I feel like an idiot. A total, complete, childish idiot, because I’m twenty-six and just had the crashing realization of what lust feels like.

  It feels like being completely and utterly unable to stop thinking about your bodyguard with his shirt off. I feels like thinking about his hands on your skin every time you close your eyes, like thinking of straddling his lap while you kiss him, tongue in his mouth—

  “Ruby, are you alright?” my mother murmurs.

  I freeze, and for a split second, I wonder if she can somehow hear my thoughts. Then I smile sweeter and turn my head slightly.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “You’re bright red.”

  “I shouldn’t have worn this cardigan on stage is all,” I whisper.

  She nods once and turns her head forward again. I settle back against the uncomfortable chair and pretend my palms aren’t sweating, refocusing my attention on my father.

  I’ve thought I was in lust before. When I was fifteen, I went to an all-girls, very Christian sleepaway camp. We were heavily supervised, of course, and there were to be no boys whatsoever on the premises.

  But there was an all-boys camp about two miles away, and like Ray told Gabriel: I’ve always been a handful. Another girl had a cousin at the boys’ camp, and apparently he was being sent there in the hopes that it would reform him, because she somehow arranged for her, me, and another friend to meet him and some friends outside his camp.

  His name was Douglas, and I kissed him. I kissed him several times, and once, we even used tongue. I didn’t even really like him — I met him that night and never saw him again — but as a teenage girl who may as well have lived under a rock, kissing a boy was one of the most thrilling things I ever did.

  And of course, within a couple of days I was completely miserable about it. Totally consumed by guilt. I’d heard endless lectures on the demons who cause lust. I’d been raised with the notion that my very first kiss would happen at the altar, on my wedding day.

  Now my stupid, thoughtless teenage actions had robbed my future husband, whoever he may be, of that special moment with me. I cried. A lot. I prayed for the lust in my heart to be taken from me, for me to no longer feel that horrible, sinful feeling. I felt awful about it for years, and I never told a single person.

  Not even Lucas, my ex-husband, though for the record we did kiss once before our wedding day, because we wanted our actual first kiss to be private. It made us feel very rebellious.

  But that wasn’t lust. None of that was. I never even came close to feeling that for Lucas, no matter how hard I tried.

  This is it. The real thing, like devils dancing gleefully in my belly. Except this time, I don’t feel bad about it. I tried to live the way my parents wanted, and look where it got me.

  The auditorium bursts into applause, and I start clapping automatically, the smile still on my face. To be honest, I’m kind of thrilled with my dumb realization. I’m sort of amazed that I can lust after someone.

  I can’t do anything about it, of course. Gabriel works for my father, and despite lying to Ray, he could start reporting on me at any time. Getting anywhere close to him would be dangerous for me and dangerous for him.

  This won’t go anywhere, because it can’t. But I’ve still got my little secret, and I’m defying them in this small, personal way, by lusting after someone and not even feeling bad about it.

  For no reason, I glance over at Gabriel. His eyes flick to mine, and I look away.

  No, I tell myself. Not a chance.

  Chapter Ten

  Gabriel

  For days after our moment between the curtains, I don’t really see Ruby.

  I mean, I see her. I spend most of my days in the same room as her, but she’s almost always surrounded by other people. If we talk, we make small, unimportant talk, her façade firmly in place.

  She tells me that she thinks the weather is lovely and I agree.

  I tell her that the cookies she’s made are absolutely delicious and she thanks me.

  It’s all formal, completely appropriate, above-board. T
he only hints of that other girl are the looks she gives me sometimes. When she’s sitting on a sofa, knees together, studying her bible and absent-mindedly running her hair through her fingers and glances up suddenly, her fingers slowing as she looks me in the eye, lets her gaze run down my body, glances at me again and goes back to reading.

  When she’s in the kitchen, kneading bread dough, one of her sisters nearby and I ask if I can help. She shows me how to knead it properly, and I roll up my sleeves to the elbow, forearms bare.

  I knead. She watches my hands, her face a mask, and then just before she thanks me she looks at me through her eyelashes and I swear it leaves a burn, it’s so heated. I wash my hands and roll my sleeves back down.

  It’s like that with us. I follow her around, as if someone might jump out of the pantry and take her away, trying not to think about what’s under her modest clothing.

  And then I go back to the carriage house every night and jerk off thinking about it. I wonder if I should go back to the Best Western where I spent my first night in town, get drunk at the bar, and pick up some other woman, but I don’t, because there’s no way it would help.

  The Burgess household goes to bed early. Most of the lights are usually out by ten o’clock with just a few bedrooms still lit. I’m sure there’s some grand moral reasoning behind it, but I haven’t bothered to find out.

  The truth is, I kind of like it. I stay up later myself, and it’s good to have an hour or two of my day when I don’t feel like I’m being watched, like whatever I do might get reported back to my boss. I’ve even hidden the condoms under the bed, because I know he’s got a key to the carriage house where I live.

  It’s still warm at night, even though the trees are just barely starting to turn yellow and orange around the edges, so I’ve taken to sitting outside, on the tiny piece of grass that could pass as a patio, and drinking a glass of iced tea.

  I wish it was whiskey, and I wish I had someone to talk to — or better yet, keep me company some other way — but I tell myself that it’s good for me not to drink, and good for me to spend some time alone like this. Introspection and all that bullshit.

  Next thing I know I’ll be doing yoga, I think, swiping one finger down the condensation on my glass.

  Well, not here. I’ve never asked the Senator’s opinion on the practice but if he doesn’t think it proceeds directly from Satan himself, I’ll eat my hat.

  I’m about to stand, the back of the house and my own apartment completely dark, when something moves around the side of the big house.

  Instantly, every muscle in my body goes rigid, and I hold perfectly still. It could be an intruder who somehow got past the gate, or it could be a cat. All I saw was a split second of motion, and then nothing.

  Quietly, I stand, careful not to scrape my chair back. I go to the side of the carriage house and press my back against it, peering around the corner, the flow chart of what to do if it’s someone, if they’re dangerous, if they’re trying to break in and hurt Ruby running through my brain.

  For a long moment there’s nothing, and I move slowly around the front of the carriage house, using the dark and the bushes as cover. Even so, I don’t see anything else, and I start to relax. More than likely, the movement was an animal, a tree branch, maybe just a weird shadow.

  It didn’t move like a tree branch or a weird shadow, but I’ve been wrong before.

  Then there’s something else, another movement. I reach for my sidearm but it’s not there, because I’m not wearing it, because I was off-duty and enjoying iced tea on my patio.

  Shit.

  There’s a window open at the side of the house, and I realize: that was the motion I saw a moment ago, the window opening. I crouch and move behind more bushes, thinking that I can get in the side door, pull the alarm, and cut the intruder off at the —

  A leg sticks out of the window, and I stop dead. The leg is wearing skinny jeans and I think it’s wearing Converse, and no one who lives in that house wears either of those things.

  Another leg joins the first, and now I’m virtually certain it’s either a woman or a man with great legs and an even greater ass. She drops to the ground, and I don’t even have to see her face for me to be about ninety percent sure I know which woman it is.

  She turns, her back to the wall, and scans the yard. Of course it’s Ruby, though she doesn’t see me, her eyes probably not acclimated to the dark just yet.

  I scan her. I haven’t seen her in pants before, let alone pants that hug her curves that way. They’re not skin-tight, but they show off about a thousand percent more of her body than I’ve seen before, not to mention her more-form-fitting-than usual t-shirt.

  It’s like seeing anyone else in lingerie. My mouth goes dry and I stare at her, hiding in the bushes like a total fucking creep, thinking about grabbing her ass in those jeans and grinding her against me.

  Fuck. I’m hard. All the effort I put into not walking about the Burgess household with a huge erection, and all it takes is Ruby in pants.

  Her back still pressed against the wall, she reaches out one arm and awkwardly pushes the window down until it’s only about an inch open, probably so she can get back in. There’s a flower bed right up against the house — Mrs. Burgess’s prize rosebushes, naturally — and Ruby walks through them until she stops, looks up, examines a rosebush, and then walks away from the house at a right angle, in my general direction.

  I frown, then keep watching as she circles in a wide arc, glancing up at the house every so often, looking nervous. It takes me a minute, but I finally realize that she’s avoiding the motion sensors on the floodlights, so she doesn’t trip them and risk waking someone up.

  Meaning she’s done this before. Meaning she’s done this plenty of times before.

  Finally she reaches the hedges along the edge of the yard and disappears into them, staying low between the bushes and the stone wall that separates their property from their neighbors’. I follow her, nearly silent, until she comes to the wrought iron fence at the front of her parents’ property. The guard shack is fifty feet away, and though there are no guards there right now — the gate is closed, and Huntsburg isn’t nearly a big or dangerous enough town to justify a 24/7 guard in there — I know there are security cameras up the wazoo on that thing.

  I’m crouching on the ground, watching her feet and legs.

  I could stop her. I could tell her to go back inside, stop sneaking out.

  Hell, if I stopped her now we’d be alone together again, in this dark, secluded spot between the hedge and the wall. That’s the real reason I’m thinking about it.

  But I don’t. I’m curious. And if I follow her, I might have the chance to talk to her alone, somewhere outside this house, away from her family.

  Ruby grabs one of the wrought iron bars in the fence with both hands. I can’t see her head from where am, but I can see what she’s doing, and she wrenches it up, then down, and suddenly the piece comes away in her hands.

  Holy shit, that’s a security concern. If she can get out it means someone else could get in; and if she knows about it then it’s nearly certain that someone else does as well…

  She’s leaving. I let her go, let her put the bar back in place. I let her walk for a count of fifty, and she walks far enough away that she’s not likely to see me before I approach the fence.

  I grab the same bar, hold my breath, and pull. After a moment of resistance it comes away in my hands with a scraping noise, and I freeze, but nothing happens. Ruby’s form, walking away from me down the sidewalk, doesn’t even turn.

  It’s a tighter squeeze for me than it was for her, but I get through the fence, replace the bar, start following her down the sidewalk about two blocks behind. I try to stick to the shadows, and though Ruby is alert, she’s not trained in spotting a follower so she doesn’t see me.

  We walk for about twenty minutes. A mile or so. The Burgess mansion is right on the edge of Huntsburg’s quaint downtown area, which also dates to back
before the Civil War: uneven brick sidewalks, two-story brick storefronts, the occasional newer building, made of concrete or stone. The streets are lined with magnolias and oaks, making the wrought-iron street lamps cast splotchy orange light that moves as the breeze shakes the branches.

  It’s warm, the town itself is charming as hell, and it should be cozy. But instead with every shadow that moves and every car that drives along this two-lane street, I’m on high alert, ready for someone to jump out at Ruby, try to take her away.

  I speed up so I’m only about a block behind her, but I’m torn. I want to protect her, but I want to let her be, let her have this tiny amount of freedom that I know she deserves.

  Finally, she reaches the center of downtown, the only part where people are still walking around and the storefronts are still lit. Ruby makes straight for a storefront with big glass windows that says FINNEGAN’S PUB on its sign, big gold letters against a green background.

  I stop, still a block away, my chest tightening, because I’ve realized something.

  Ruby’s at a bar, alone, dressed normally, late at night. It’s a weekday, sure, but her options for going out are probably pretty limited.

  She’s on a date.

  Of course she is. She has to be.

  And even though it’s none of my business whatsoever, I hate it. I stand on the corner of Beauregard and Main, arms crossed in front of me, staring at the door of the bar, and just hate it.

  I want to go in there, find whoever she’s meeting, and get in his face until he leaves. Then I want to sit down at his seat while Ruby smiles at me, that look sparkling in her green eyes, and tells me how glad she is I’m there.

  Except that’s fucking stupid. That’s some middle-school level bullshit, not least because I’m pretty sure Ruby’s had more than enough of men telling her what to do in her life. She deserves being on this date with someone she chose. Hopefully someone she likes.

  I pace around the block, trying to calm myself down. I don’t want to leave her there, alone, because she’s still in danger, but the danger of a pub filled with people is less than the danger of an empty street at night.